New Cancelled Games & Their Lost Media Added to the Archive

Roman Bloodsport [XBOX – Cancelled]

Roman Bloodsport is a cancelled action / racing game that was in development by Dynamic Animation Systems for the original XBOX in 2003. The player would have been able to engage in gladiatorial events in many places across the empire of ancient Rome. As we can read in the official press release:

From gruesome fights to the death in arenas to dangerous high-speed chariot races, the player must master a multitude of different skills to survive and ultimately be victorious. Roman Bloodsport Live! extends the gameplay of the single player game presenting the player with the opportunity to compete against other online players in ladder and tournament games, eventually becoming the leader of his own clan of warriors.

* Arena combat and chariot racing together in one game
* 10 diferent arenas and 10 different chariot race tracks
* Exotic opponents from the far reaches of ancient Rome
* Role-playing elements allow the player to customize and upgrade their equipment as they gane wealth and fame
* XBox Live! game play extends the role-playing elements of the single player campaign

In the end Roman Bloodsport was never released, maybe because they did not find a publisher interested in the project.

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Zombie High [Genesis / MegaDrive – Cancelled]

Zombie High is a cancelled side scrolling action game that was in development by Electronic Arts for the Sega Genesis / Mega Drive. An incomplete beta rom was somehow leaked online

It seems that there are a few enemies at the end of level 1 that cannot be defeated with your default slime weapon. They can be defeated by using the book as a weapon by entering the door marked number 4 next to the enemies and the book weapon will appear. It is very difficult to defeat them without being defeated yourself.

Celine was able to find some early screenshots in Joypad magazine #10, in which we can notice that the main character sprite has some differences from the one in the playable beta. It’s currently unknown why this game was canned and never released.

Recently a debug mode was found by “The Jackal” by pressing start and A on controller 2 simultaneously. Using this debug mode we can get to see more levels,Music that was never used(which after some research appears to be music used in a later EA title “Crue ball” composed by “Brian L Shmidt” Weapon select,invincibility and disabling enemies. It appears a lot of the game was finished but the only things missing are an ending to the game and most of the minigames and dialogue sections that can be found by entering certain doors in various levels will not work properly unless accessed using the debug modes level select feature

The main characters name in this game according to the debug menu is “Travis” He is also referred to as Travis by some of the characters in the classroom sections

There is a movie of the same name released in 1987, This game may have taken some inspiration from this movie despite not being a game based on this movie, One of the in game characters is called “Emerson” there is also a character in the movie named Emerson, which further confirms this suspicion

The end boss of the game is loosely based around the appearance of Allister Fiend from the band “Motley Crue” EA also licensed Crue Ball a year after this games cancellation and Allister Fiend also appears in this game. The only difference in Zombie High is that he is blue

Crue Ball shares many things in common with zombie high, such as similar graphics design, and similar sounding music (one identical song) The designers of Crue Ball are called NuFx Who could be the possible designers of Zombie High
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Thanks to Celine for the contribution!

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The lost Sentient 2 project

Sentient is a first-person adventure developed by Psygnosis and released on the original Playstation and PC in 1997. The game was rather obscure when it came out, but it was loved by those few ones that somehow were able to play it. Thanks to an interview from The Gaming Liberty, we found out that a concept for “Sentient 2” was in early stages of development, but it was soon canned because the former lead programmer was busy with another project and the low sales of the first chapter were not a good sign. As we can read:

Colin Burges, who took part in the interview above, told me about what was being considered as the storyline. Colin tells me that they had a competition in the studio to come up with the best idea for a storyline for Sentient 2. Colin tells me “there were a couple of meetings to discuss what new gameplay might be involved with the story, so I think all we had in the end was the early story document. I can’t remember exactly why we didn’t go any further but I think it might have been because the lead programmer on Sentient was starting work on Lander and they weren’t sure it was a good idea to do it without him on the project. Also the lowish sales on Sentient might have stopped it going much further anyway.

Thanks to Denis for the contribution!

Gumshoe [PC / XBOX – Cancelled]

Gumshoe is an adventure game that was in development by Hiding Buffalo in 2002 / 2003 for the PC and the original XBOX. As we can read in the original press release:

The concept for the game along with a working prototype were created as Hiding Buffalo’s entry in the 2002 Dare to be Digital competition, which challenges groups of students to create a new and original piece of digital content. Entries are judged by a panel of industry experts on their originality and commercial potential. Gumshoe was chosen by a majority of the judges thanks to it’s unusual concept, naturalistic dialogue system and innovative gameplay and episodic approach.

In the end, they never found a publisher interested in the project and so Gumshoe was cancelled. It’s interesting to notice that Hiding Buffalo did released a flash version of the game in 2006, even if it looked much different from the PC and Xbox version.

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SimCopter 64 [N64DD – Cancelled]

SimCopter 64 is a cancelled Nintendo 64DD remake of the original SimCopter developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts for PC in 1996. It’s unclear if this version for the 64DD was going to have some substantial differences from the PC one, as happened with SimCity 64. As we can read on IGN, SimCopter 64 was officially canned in 1999:

Sim Copter 64 was even previewed at a very early stage at the Tokyo Game Show. Onlookers were not impressed with its foggy, first-generation graphics and the game’s US release was soon cancelled in favor of a Japan-only release for the disk drive system.

Since then, Nintendo has again delayed the debut of the 64DD to later this year and Maxis, apparently losing faith in the viability of the title on the DD, has abandoned the project completely.

Thanks to Celine for the contribution! (Scans from Console Plus #79, Mega Console #44, Consolemania #77)

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Video (Nintendo 64):

For comparison, a video from the PC version: